[Foundation-l] Letter to the community on Controversial Content

Tobias Oelgarte tobias.oelgarte at googlemail.com
Mon Oct 17 08:38:48 UTC 2011


It is a in house made problem, as i explained at brainstorming [1].
To put it short: It is a self made problem, based on the fact that this 
images got more attention then others. Thanks to failed deletion 
requests they had many people caring about them. This results in more 
exact descriptions and file naming then in average images. Thats what 
search engines prefer; and now we have them at a top spot. Thanks for 
caring so much about this images and not treating them like anything else.

Andreas, you currently represent exactly that kind of argumentation that 
leads into anything, but not to a solution. I described it already in 
the post "Controversial Content vs Only-Image-Filter" [2], that single 
examples don't represent the overall thematic. It also isn't an addition 
to the discussion as an argument. It would be an argument if we would 
know the effects that occur. We have to clear the question:

* Is it a problem that the search function displays sexual content? (A 
search should find anything related, by definition.)
* Is sexual content is overrepresented by the search?
* If that is the case. Why is it that way?
* Can we do something about it, without drastic changes, like 
blocking/excluding categories?

[1] 
http://meta.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Controversial_content%2FBrainstorming&action=historysubmit&diff=2996411&oldid=2995984
[2] 
http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/foundation-l/2011-October/069699.html

Am 17.10.2011 02:56, schrieb Andreas Kolbe:
> Personality conflicts aside, we're noting that non-sexual search terms in Commons can prominently return sexual images of varying explicitness, from mild nudity to hardcore, and that this is different from entering a sexual search term and finding that Google fails to filter some results.
>
> I posted some more Commons search terms where this happens on Meta; they include 
>
> Black, Caucasian, Asian; 
>
> Male, Female, Teenage, Woman, Man; 
>
> Vegetables; 
>
> Drawing, Drawing style; 
>
> Barbie, Doll; 
>
> Demonstration, Slideshow; 
>
> Drinking, Custard, Tan; 
>
> Hand, Forefinger, Backhand, Hair; 
>
> Bell tolling, Shower, Furniture, Crate, Scaffold; 
>
> Galipette – French for "somersault"; this leads to a collection of 1920s pornographic films which are undoubtedly of significant historical interest, but are also pretty much as explicit as any modern representative of the genre.
>
> Andreas
>
>
>
>> ________________________________
>> From: Dan Rosenthal<swatjester at gmail.com>
>> To: Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List<foundation-l at lists.wikimedia.org>
>> Sent: Sunday, 16 October 2011, 20:31
>> Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] Letter to the community on Controversial Content
>>
>> If the entire premise of an email comes down to "I'm taunting you", that's
>> an indication it probably shouldn't be sent.
>>
>>
>> Dan Rosenthal
>>
>>
>> On Sun, Oct 16, 2011 at 10:27 PM, ???<wiki-list at phizz.demon.co.uk>  wrote:
>>
>>> On 16/10/2011 19:36, Tobias Oelgarte wrote:
>>>> Am 16.10.2011 16:17, schrieb ???:
>>>>> On 16/10/2011 14:50, David Gerard wrote:
>>>>>> On 16 October 2011 14:40, ???<wiki-list at phizz.demon.co.uk>     wrote:
>>>>>>
>>>>>>> Don't be an arsehole you get the same sort of stuff if you search for
>>>>>> Presumably this is the sort of quality of discourse Sue was
>>>>>> complaining about from filter advocates: provocateurs lacking in
>>>>>> empathy.
>>>>>>
>>>>> Trolling much eh David?
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> But thanks for showing once again your incapacity to acknowledge that
>>>>> searching for sexual images and seeing such images, is somewhat
>>>>> different, from searching for non sexual imagary and getting sexual
>>> images.
>>>> I have to agree with David. Your behavior is provocative and
>>>> unproductive. I don't feel the need to respond to your arguments at all,
>>>> if you write in this tone. You could either excuse yourself for this
>>>> kind of wording, or we are done.
>>>>
>>>
>>> Now you wouldn't be complainng about seeing content not to your liking
>>> would you. What are you going to do filter out the posts? Bet your glad
>>> your email provider added that option for you.
>>>
>>> Yet another censorship hipocrite.
>>>
>>>
>>>
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